Jack Anderson

NYC Ballet: Concertos, Etc.

New York City Ballet
April 25-June 25, 2006
Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.,
Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., $30-86
New York State Theater, Lincoln Center
Tickets: (212) 721-6500 or www.nycballet.com
Reviewed by Jack Anderson May 26, 2006

"Let's choreograph a concerto!"

Ever since shifting tastes earlier in the twentieth century
made it permissible to use concert music for dances, choreographers have
been choreographing concertos. Their appeal is obvious. Most concertos
are solid orchestral works in several contrasting movements, each of which
may abound with its own internal contrasts.

But concertos can pose problems. Their movements may become
separate sonic blocks, making it difficult for choreographers to progress
easily from one movement to another. Moreover, composers can give a concerto's
solo instrument elaborate cadenzas or other virtuoso sequences that choreographers
cannot match. Nevertheless, concertos continue to inspire dances.

Concertos inspired two recent productions in the New York
City Ballet's Diamond Project festival. Both received their premieres
May 10, and were repeated together, May 20. Neither is a major addition
to the repertoire.

In fact, Peter Martins's "The Red Violin" is annoyingly
pointless. Like many City Ballet creations, it takes its title from its
score: in this case, John Corigliano' s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
("The Red Violin"). That title, in turn, is an acknowledgment
that the concerto includes music Corigliano wrote for the film "The
Red Violin," which I never saw, but which, I'm told, chronicles the
adventures of a remarkable violin through history.

The ballet jettisons this scenario, and Martins has a perfect
artistic right to do so. But he has kept a title which, though intriguing,
is totally irrelevant to his choreography and which may confuse balletgoers.
The action Martins has devised for his cast of eight has little to do
with anything except the notes of the concerto, for which Kurt Nikkanen
was the violinist, and Martins treats this music in a doggedly literal
manner.

Corigliano provides many changes of mood, and Martins tries
to duplicate them all kinetically. But things happen on stage only because
comparable things are happening in the score. Fast music prompts fast
choreography; slow music gives us solemn twistings. Individual choreographic
episodes have little significance in themselves and because they fail
to build, the ballet lacks overall coherence.

Christopher Wheeldon's "Evenfall," to Bartok's
Piano Concerto No. 3, with Cameron Grant as pianist, is considerably better,
yet does not rank among this gifted young choreographer's strongest pieces.
As usual with Wheeldon, his structure is ingenious: here, he appears to
be balletically uniting crystallography and ornithology.

In the first movement, two groups of six women are soon
joined by six men and they gather in exquisite formations suggesting crystals.
But the women's arm movements strongly resemble the avian flutters of
"Swan Lake." In the mysterious second movement, Miranda Weese
and Damian Woetzel dance slowly together while couples group and regroup
beside and behind them. Weese vanishes and Woetzel, like Prince Siegfried
looking for his Swan Queen, searches for her amid clusters of women. The
finale reunites everyone. But its patterns are not as imaginative as those
in previous movements. And, in an unconventional reversal of "Swan
Lake" motifs, it is Woetzel's Prince who eventually vanishes, leaving
the Swan Queen bereft.

Wheeldon surely enjoyed himself concocting "Swan Lake"
fantasies. But they do not add up to much of significance. Still, they
remain pleasant to watch.

The next premiere, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's "Two Birds
with the Wings of One" (May 25) used existing scores that were not
concertos: Bright Sheng's "Two Poems from the Sung Dynasty"
(sung in Chinese by the soprano Lauren Flanagan) and the orchestral "Chu
Lin's Dance." Musically, the production was of special interest because
Sheng has just been appointed City Ballet's first composer-in-residence.
He has not yet written a score for the company, but this was a chance
to get to know his music.

"Two Birds" makes it difficult to come to any
firm conclusions. The music featured slithering string sounds and strong
percussive rhythms. But their effectiveness was dulled by Bonnefoux's
vague choreographic account of the love and separation of two lovers,
Sofiane Sylve and Andrew Veyette, who wore costumes by Holly Hynes adorned
with Chinese decorations. Although there seemed to be a real story hidden
away here that was aching to get told, Bonnefoux never managed to tell
it. Indeed, he sometimes appeared reluctant to show anything dramatically
specific.

Other City Ballet choreographers have sometimes been similarly
timid, as if the justifiable fame of George Balanchine as an abstract
neo-classicist has made them hesitant to try anything as possibly old-fashioned
as storytelling. But Balanchine, when he wanted, told very good stories.
Reverence for one master's accomplishments ought not to lead to a narrowing
of ballet's expressive possibilities or cause anyone to underestimate
the scope of that master.